Chapter VII - A plan and a first lesson

The plan ended up pretty simple. First Maya showed her mother in the evening with a proud smile, that she was able to fill the line on the very first cube Magdalena had put in her crib, nearly half. Again, using the barrier as an external Mana source. Her grandmother had called it cheating and looked rather annoyed but Kiara was not sure, if it was because she did not realize what she had been doing, or if the fact, that she was in the end leaching from her Mana to play with her toys.

“No wonder the crystal is always depleted and if we are already addressing the topic no more kicking of the barrier” she had mumbled angrily. Kiara had nodded, but smiled mischievously at the same time.

Her request to drop the barrier completely had been denied rather swiftly without leaving any room for discussion. However, a plan was made, to create a smaller separate crystal Kiara could use as a source for her practice for now.

Maya had had a complicated look on her face when she saw her little daughter showcasing her protegee level Magical skills, not that this took or meant a lot at her current level. A well placed “Mama” and a little bit of laughter convinced her enough to show a proud smile.

Nevertheless, it resulted in a tense dinner, in which Magdalena was wrongly accused to influence her child and providing new magical training tools against her wishes. Sarok jumped in and took the fall for it and simply explained, that he thought some more toys would be good for little Kiara.

The look Maya gave him had Kiara flinch. Her father would most likely sleep on the couch tonight.

A few days later when the family had gathered for some afternoon snacks (Kiara of course did not get any of those). Kiara had dragged the cube over to her grandmother proudly showing it to her. The only problem was without a magical artifact to source the magic from her grandmother had to help her. Soon the line was lit up completely and the whole cube shown in a bright green light.

Her grandmother pretended to be surprised and gave her mother a meaningful look.

“It looks like Kiara might be interested in learning the art of weaving and is enjoying her play time with my toys. Can I spend some time with her to teach her the basics? Of course, only if she wants to and you allow it.” Magdalena asked timidly.

Maya looked at the same time angry, kind of proud and like an animal backed into a corner about to lash out.

In the moment of silence Sarok cleared his throat and gently took his wife’s hand. “I think that would be alright with us, but only an hour a day at most and only as long as Kiara wants to do so. Is that alright with you dear?”

Maya only gave a swift nod. Magdalena and Kiara shared a quick look at their victory. No one said more regarding about the topic and Petro soon began to ask questions over questions regarding his school start in a few days.

On Petro’s first day of school Kiara and Magdalena had their first lesson, while her parents were accompanying her brother to school. Or at least that had been the plan. Instead Kiara got to watch her grandmother in action for the first time and got some explanations.

First, she pried one of the floorboards loose and began drawing on the backside of it.

“What do you know about the Rune language of weaves? How did your old world handle magic? What style of weave was the most common?”

“On my old there was no magic at all. We had rather advanced technology, but there was nothing similar to the magic of this world.” Kiara admitted sheepishly.

“WHAT?!?” Magdalena said surprised. For a short moment she was completely still, even her hands had stopped moving.

“You came from a dead world? How did you even ever fight the wild beasts and monsters of your world without magic or any skill enhancements”

“There were no beasts or monsters or at least not anymore. Nearly everything which could pose a risk to a human had been eradicated to the point of near extinction a long time ago and the whole world was mostly safe. Well expect for other humans.” Admitted Kiara

“Well, aren’t you a lucky one” Magdalena said slightly annoyed. “Listen up. If you ever leave the safety of the city walls and their wards. Hell, maybe even if you spend all your life inside the city, you will see monsters roam the countryside. Most of them are relatively harmless if you know how to deal with them. A grown, initiated man can handle some of them even without a combat specialization or a prepared trap or ambush. However, there are stronger evolutions which are able to scale the walls of our cities and which tear a normal man into two in the blink of an eye. Without working together, the guard might not stand a chance and even they can only do so much here in the outer reaches of the empire. Swarms, hordes, and fledgling titans have eradicated more then a few towns in our history.”

“You are never truly safe in this world. The stronger you are the more likely you will be to keep yourself and those surrounding you safe, but if you ever draw the anger of a god or one of those really ancient beasts, well tough luck. Better go hide in the shelter and pray to emerge alive after the world around you has been burned down to a crisp. Do you understand that?” Her stern look made apparent how serious she was about this.

Kiara was silent for a long moment. It was much to take in. Yes of course, in many of the fantasy novels she had read there were many of the same tropes, but she never took the time to consider what it meant for the people living in such a world.

“So, what you are saying is I will have to become strong, learn how to fight and defend myself, because the time will come where I will need those skills?” she inquired, just to make sure she really understood her grandmother’s message.

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Her grandmother’s finger shot out and flicked her forehead. “What are you… five? You said you lived a life before this one, act accordingly! Only a half brained stone piercer would think personal strength is the only form of power. Yes, there are people like the guard, which have honed a specialized skill set to deal with monsters and from time to time trouble makers inside the city, which rely mostly on one’s personal strength. However those skills are rigid, they are good for their one application and that is it. An intolerable weakness and not the way of our family. We are weavers! We are flexible and adopt to what’s needed. We use our brain to solve problems not our big muscles! We prepare, we plan, make contingency plans and destroy our enemies from a distance. We ward city walls and secure emergency shelters. I have killed more monsters with a single weave then most guards see in their whole life.” The energy slowly vanished out of Magdalena’s voice. She sounded tired.

“At least that’s what our family used to do. Yes, you will need a certain amount of personal power and strength, but that doesn’t mean you have to go out there swinging a sword around. We have other people collecting the resources we need. In fact that’s the whole reason for this town’s existence. To collect mana rich ingredients for further refinement and crafting. It once belonged to our family you know.” She showed Kiara a kind smile filled with pride at their families past.

Kiara did not feel her head flick, which was still painfully throbbing, had been at all deserved. It was not her fault Magdalena did have some kind of issue with martial weapons, but instead of voicing out her dissatisfaction and risking a repeat, she just kept silent.

After a moment Magdalena showed her a small bracelet. A dim, milky and cloudy crystal was prominently embedded into it.

“This is your training bracelet. It doesn’t contain a lot of mana, nor is it very pure, but for your early training it will suffice. After a while you will develop your own dormant Mana source. It will allow you to perform feats of Magic without an external source and is increased by regular training. Just like you would train a muscle. In addition to the total capacity, both purity and activation amount are also important. And of course, your control, both in how detailed you can work, as well as in how many different tasks you can perform in parallel. Also of course the speed of your performance. It must become instinctual, like walking and breathing.” She continued to ramble on for a little while, before realizing she had lost her granddaughter in her magical details.

“Well, you will learn that by playing with your toys” she said smiling and adding. “ I will reload your bracelet once a day and also tell your mother about it, so if you can find a way to ask her, she might also reload it for you, but I would tread careful. You don’t want to overstretch her goodwill.”

“Time to get back into your role. Your parents are returning and are probably one or two minutes out, before they are home. Maya is walking as fast as possible. She is nearly running. Tsk, no trust. I am her mother spending time with my granddaughter. She is hurrying home like a hungry blood hyena is in the house.”

When Maya returned, she found her mother and daughter happily playing with some toy blocks on the carpet.

*** Kiara ***

With her brother now in school, her mornings were mostly spent studying or at least her version of it. She trained and trained using the toys her father had provided, but progress was slow. Without the help of her grandmother she was still only barely able to complete the first cube and only if her Mana bracelet was completely full.

Her grandmother had repeatedly insulted her handling as wasteful and inefficient, leaking Mana all over the place and called the bracelet she herself had made her little crutch.

Surprisingly it did not bother her. It felt like a new way to apply herself, to experiment and learn something completely new. She would show her grandmother what she was capable of.

Slowly as the days turned into months, she could feel herself grow. It became easier to draw Mana from her bracelet and she could feel something form deep in her chest, stimulated every time she trained. The first cube was now easily completed. The second was quite similar to the first, except the line being longer and having some gentle turns and curves in them. Progress was being made, but it was still difficult for her to get her Mana to do what she wanted and only pressing it into the cube only got her so far. She needed to control it to mend it into the form it needed to have, to lead it down the path it was supposed to take without loosing its grip on it.

At first Mana had been a real struggle to manage. The little bracelet did not contain a lot of it and once it was expended she had to stop until she could find somebody to refill it for her. Her grandmother checked in with her most evening and filled her back up. She refused to teach her anything substantial. Insisting over and over she first needed to build a stable foundation of Mana control and managing her Mana efficiently.

The old hag’s Mana was the most powerful and easiest to work with, but she was also stingy with it. By morning she normally had used up most of it in her nightly training.

Surprisingly her dad had started to play with her each morning. He liked to see how far she had come and always had some words of encouragement for her. He was the complete opposite of her grandmother and to be honest Kiara had started to look up to him. He loved his wife and family dearly and spend all the time he could spare with them. She still did not know what her dad did for work, but it had to be something physical given how huge and bulky he was and how tired he sometimes looked when he returned home in the evening.

His Mana was strange. Like it had a will on its own it, was sturdy and Kiara had to really push against it mentally to get it to do what she wanted, but it did leak less than her grandmothers. If she had to describe it, she would say her grandmother’s Mana was like water offering little resistance, but if one did not pay close attention, it would easily run through your fingers and spill everywhere. Her dad’s was more like honey. It took time and effort to get to move, but at the same time less attention to control it.

She had never asked her mother for any Mana not sure, how to even approach the subject. Her mother had started to read stories to her as well. Adventure stories mostly and always from books aimed at little children, but often times reading those stories to her seemed to make her sad.

She showed her the kitchen and let her watch when she was cooking. Sometimes even sitting her down on the worktop when she was preparing ingredients. It was the first time Kiara saw someone apply magic to themselves. The way her mother cut vegetables could not be explained any other way. She had seen a lot of cooking shows in her past life and had been a decent cook herself even teaching kids during summer as part of a vacation camp, but never had she seen a knife fly like this.

Precise, in a calm rhythm and so fast her eyes could barely track its movement and all this while keeping at least one eye on her baby. One time, when she just started to smell something burning she wasn’t sure if she blinked at the wrong time or if her mother had teleported over to the stove, cursing or at least she presumed those were curse words as she had never heard those before and immediately and barehanded pulling the pot of the heat.

She did not know how it worked, but was a fascinating application completely without any visible weaves.